Related

A person dressed as a Sesame Street muppet has swiped a cookie statue in Hanover, Germany, and refuses to give it back until a local food company agrees to donate free cookies to a children’s hospital.

What exactly is this cookie statue, you might ask? It’s a giant golden model of a Leibniz cookie, one of those yummy square butter cookies, occasionally sold with chocolate on one side, and it used to hang by the entrance to the corporate headquarters of Bahlsen, which has made Leibniz cookies in Hanover since the 19th century.

The masked thief, who calls himself Cookie Monster, sent a letter to a Hanover newspaper demanding cookies for children in exchange for the statue’s safe return, reports Der Spiegel. “I have the cookie! And you want it,” says the ransom note. “You must give all the children milk chocolate cookies on one day in February — and not dark chocolate.” It is signed “Cookie Monster.” The perpetrator enclosed a picture of himself, dressed as the famed Sesame Street character, biting into the giant gold cookie. (Click here to see the images on Der Spiegel.)

A spokesman for the children’s hospital involved was not impressed, calling the action theft and blackmail. “Bahlsen has already done a lot for our hospital — it doesn’t need to be coerced in this way.”

That was not the end of the Cookie Monster’s demands, however. He is also asking that the $1,350 reward offered for information on him be gifted to a local animal shelter. What will become of the golden cookie being held hostage? The Cookie Monster says he will throw it in a trash can with Oscar the Grouch if he doesn’t get his way.